Online mortgage broker Trussle raises £13.6M Series B

Trussle, the U.K. online mortgage broker that competes most directly with Atomico-backed Habito, has closed £13.6 million in Series B funding.

Notably, the round is led by Goldman Sachs Principal Strategic Investments — a division of Goldman Sachs — and Propel Venture Partners, a fund backed by European banking giant BBVA.

In addition, a number of other investors also participated including Finch Capital, which led Trussle’s Series A fund raise, and Seedcamp, which has backed the fintech startup from the get-go.

Launched in 2016, Trussle moves the entire mortgage process online, bringing with it much-needed transparency. One aspect to this — powered by the data it amassing and machine learning — is making it infinitely easier to ‘switch’ mortgage when a better deal or lower interest rate becomes available. The same technology-driven approach is used for those looking to find and apply for a new or first time mortgage.

In a brief call this morning, Trussle co-founder and CEO Ishaan Malhi told me that the new capital will be used to further scale up the company, noting that the Trussle team has grown from 14 to 70 people since its Series A in February 2017. A significant portion of these are in product development as the fintech startup moves from what Malhi describes as a transactional proposition — where customers use Trussle at the point of taking out a mortgage — to a “lifetime proposition” that supports customers when they first start thinking about owning their own home and then throughout their financed home ownership.

As an example of this, he pointed me towards Trussle’s mortgage monitoring service, which launched last year. It constantly monitors the market and alerts you when money can be saved by switching to another deal.

However, the longer term vision — and presumably part of what attracted investors — is to return more value based on the data Trussle captures. This could include telling you when it may be advantageous to overpay and giving you an easy to understand dashboard that clearly shows where you are at in the repayment process.

More broadly, Trussle wants to play a major role and making home ownership a reality for many for whom is it increasingly prohibitive (think: Generation Rent). To do this, he doesn’t rule out partnerships with other fintech startups aligned to that same mission.

Adds Malhi in a statement: “The backing from two prolific and globally renowned fintech investors recognises the brilliant progress we’ve made, but also the scale of our ambition. The funding will enable us to invest significantly in building our brand and our product, but fundamentally will accelerate us towards our vision of digitising the end-to-end journey to make home ownership more affordable and accessible to all”.